


how the west was taken

by grayintogreen



Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Gen, also a flashback, child abuse ahoy, coda to 02x03, in which lee and hester deserved like ten hugs after that damn episode, in which lee knows how to dad because he knows how NOT to dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28262799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayintogreen/pseuds/grayintogreen
Summary: “Just do me a favor,” she said, nuzzling against him. “Don’t think about him anymore for awhile, all right?”Lee grunted an affirmation. “I’ll think about how I’m doing a lot better as a father to a kid that ain’t even my own than mine or hers managed.”“There you go.”
Relationships: Lee Scoresby & Hester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	how the west was taken

Lee stumbled as he loosened some of the rocks from the wall and sent them tumbling down into the canyon below. He caught himself before he slid back down and then, adjusting the pop gun on his back with determination, he continued to climb upwards. Hester fluttered above him as a starling.

“Pa’s gonna be mad if we’re home late,” she said.

He brushed off his jeans with his hand, righting himself on the flat ground now that he’d finished his ascent. “Pa’s in his cups by now. He probably don’t even know we’re gone.” He held out his hand and Hester lighted upon it, shifting into a field mouse right in his palm, prompting a smirk as he slid her into his pocket. She nestled against his breast as the two walked across the long stretch of dirt and scrubgrass pockmarked by large boulders. Here lay the playground of all the local children, where countless battles were waged for control over the largest rock that they all had gleefully named after the Alamo in honor of the only history lessons any of them had ever bothered to take to heart. 

And it was here, Lee aimed to lay out a strategy. 

Lee laid his pop gun against one of the rocks and surveyed the area. The games were controlled by the two oldest kids who had designated themselves Generals and from there, they would choose from the pack of younger kids who among them made up their individual armies. The first kids picked were always captains or lieutenants, but the last ones picked were always grunt soldiers and sentries.

Lee was, generally, picked somewhere in the middle. He wasn’t big enough to be picked for intimidation factor and Hester couldn’t shift as fast as some of the younger kids whose daemons were still fresh-faced and in flux, putting him squarely in a mediocre spot. At fourteen, he wasn’t even that much younger than their so-called Generals, but everything else stood against him. Even Marjorie Owens, the sole girl who played Alamo games, would be picked ahead of him because her father was a trader and she’d traveled enough with him that her daemon had picked up shapes the other kids had never seen. A number of battles had been won because Jessup jumped out of nowhere as a tiger and scared some kid and their daemon senseless.

No, Lee wouldn’t get picked first based on things like that. He had cleverness on his side- a deeply underutilized skill. He tended to get picked to be on Franklin Lyons’ team and Franklin had a failing defense compared to his twin brother Thompkins, and Lee intended to fix that, and the only way to work out how was to come up here during suppertime when it was dark and no other kid was around to see it. 

It was risky, given Pa’s temper, but Lee played fast and loose with that hair trigger often enough that it didn’t bother him enough to make him pause. Even Hester seemed resigned. If not this, then Pa and his coyote daemon Tallulah would find something else, and if they were going to get hit, then at least they earned this one.

“Well, Hester, what are we looking at?”

She popped her mouse head out of his pocket and glanced around. “Lots of cover, but you know that. The problem is everyone knows these hiding spots, so it doesn’t do us any good to use them.”

“Yep,” Lee drawled. “So we need to be inventive.”

“Well, unless you’re gonna lay on the ground and pretend to be scrubgrass, I don’t know what to tell you, Lee.” 

He was about to say something to Hester’s biting retort, but then his brain caught up to her words and he let out a whoop of delight. “Hester! You might have the right idea.”

“What?” She said, flatly.

But Lee had already grabbed his popgun and was headed for the thorny brush that lined the edge of the canyon, an idea forming into his head clear enough that even Hester caught on quickly without it needing to be spelled out. Carefully, he moved some of it enough that he could crawl under, but, even still, briars caught his clothes and cut his hands and face, and Hester had to turn into a corn snake just so she could get comfortably underneath with him. It was a tight squeeze, but once Lee was in, he was well hidden.

“Take a peek for yourself,” he said, proudly, ignoring his bleeding knuckles and the briars already tangling in his mess of brown hair. Hester slithered out from underneath and shifted into a mouse again, canting her head. “Well, you’re hidden, that’s for sure. We gonna snipe ‘em from cover they can’t get at?” 

The rules of the game said that if your daemon was tackled by another daemon, you’re “dead” and this was usually accompanied by the popgun’s telltale POP or, in the cases of the kids who didn’t have their own, someone yelling BANG to indicate a gunshot as they aimed their makeshift stick-rifles. Good sports knew to let their daemons go limp and not fight back, but there had been times when “kills” had been “disputed” by daemons getting rough. Hester had been on the receiving end of a few bouts of violence and even turning into a cougar hadn’t helped her, because Thompkins’ Bobcat daemon was a nightmare and both of them were sore losers. This was as much about beating a bully as it was at being taken seriously as a player.

“Can’t dispute a kill if you knock ‘em down and then get back here where they can’t hit back,” Lee said, proudly.

“That’s cheating,” Hester responded, though not with judgment. 

“That’s strategy.”

Lee wriggled out from underneath the brush again and spent a good ten more minutes with Hester- as a mole- digging himself a better foxhole to crawl into. After he used it once, there’d be kids trying desperately to claim it for themselves, but for now, it was shaped to fit him, specifically, without causing much damage, and he was betting on the rest of the kids not risking the pain. 

Lee was used to pain. A briar or two was nothing compared to Pa Scoresby’s backhand.

By now, the moon had risen overhead and the stars were out like watchful eyes, blinking out a warning to get on back home before it got too late. Lee shouldered his popgun again and Hester took off as a mockingbird- her favorite form- singing a cheerful little tune that Lee echoed back to her as he climbed down the canyon. He’d inherited his temperament from Ma, but also her singing voice and while it didn’t do him much good but get him picked to sing solos in choir (which, in turn, got him mocked and picked at), it was something that he could keep from his long dead mother. He longed for the days before Pa took to the bottle and the belt when he and Hester and Ma and her songbird daemon Larkspur would sing in the kitchen while doing chores. He figured Hester would settle as a bird like Lark had- more and more often, she kept to that form, and Lee couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy being that much closer to Ma.

Their call and response singing game- and Lee’s daydreaming of better times- continued all the way back to the house when the pair suddenly went deathly quiet, eyeing their ramshackle little home as if it was something living and dangerous that would wake and attack if they made too much noise. In many ways, it was.

“Think he’s asleep?” Hester whispered, landing on Lee’s shoulder. He leaned his popgun against the shed as he crept closer to the house.

“Hoping so,” he responded. 

The door made no sound as he pushed it open enough for the two of them to squeeze in. It clicked close with nary an additional noise and Lee thought he was free to make it to his bed when he heard a sudden growl and felt the weight in his chest that knocked him forward as Tallulah lunged from the shadows and snapped Hester up in her teeth. Hester’s cry mirrored his own and Lee had no time to right himself before his father followed his daemon’s lead and grabbed him by the back of his collar, and jostled him roughly.

“Where’ve you been, boy?” He snarled. His breath reeked of cheap, bathtub moonshine and the stale smell of his cigarillos. He didn’t give Lee a chance to answer before he shook him again. “Do you think this is funny? Making me worry like that? Makin’ me think I’m gonna find my kid dead in a ditch?”

Lee would have said something to the effect of, _The only way anyone’s gonna find me in a ditch is if you put me there,_ but his father had him by the collar so hard that it was actively choking him and cutting off his air, leaving him speechless and gasping. Mercifully, he was dropped a moment later, but that was only so his father could haul off and sock him across the jaw, dropping him. 

From this angle, Lee could see that Hester was struggling in Tallulah’s mouth still- she’d transformed into something that the coyote couldn’t just swallow, but had remained small enough to not be viewed as a threat, so currently she was just a scrawny raccoon, dangling pathetically and looking at Lee with pleading eyes. It wasn’t the first time she’d begged him not to fight back, and she was right to think that way. They always got it worse when Lee fought back. She knew when to push and when to hold him back and sometimes he even listened.

So Lee stayed down right where he had landed in a heap on the floor from the punch, and kept his eyes averted, “Sorry, Pa.”

The answer was a swift kick right in his gut that doubled him over and threatened to make him lose what little he had in his stomach, given he had skipped supper. Hester gasped suddenly and he hoped Tallulah hadn’t bitten her too hard- he worried more about his daemon in the jaws of that feral beast more than he worried about himself at the hands of his equally feral father.

“Not sorry enough,” the old man said and he aimed for another kick-

-and then he recoiled suddenly. Lee heard Tallulah yelp in pain at precisely the same time the kick didn’t connect, and then Hester yelling: “Lee, get up! Run!”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Still nursing his bruised midsection, he scrambled to his feet and forced himself into a run, tearing through the door and slamming it behind him. He didn’t look back and he didn’t look to see if Hester was following- she was and he would have known that blind. She never strayed too far, even to the extent that their bond would allow. She couldn’t abide it.

Lee didn’t know how far they had gotten before he stopped finally, his breathing ragged. He doubled over with his hands on his knees, coughing and dry heaving with exertion and the pain from his father’s kick. “We did it,” he finally gasped out. “We got away.”

“Lee… Are you okay?” Hester. He hadn’t even looked at her since they fled. He finally looked up, expecting to see her in the sky, only to see nothing above him.

“On the ground, Lee,” she said, and he dropped his gaze to meet the beautiful hazel eyes of a scrawny jackrabbit. For a moment, daemon and boy stared at one another, and then finally, Lee wheezed:

“Never saw you take that form before.”

“Never needed to, I guess. Worked on Tallulah something fierce. I kicked her right in her stupid face.” She hesitated, and it was then that Lee began to suspect something was wrong. In any situation like this, Hester would be all over the place with her shifting, going between something dangerous to protect them to something small and soft he could take comfort in, but here she was, still a rabbit and no indication that she might become something else.

“Hester… You’re not changing.”

Hester looked askance. “I… I don’t think I can.”

Lee almost asked her if she was too hurt or scared before the actual reason a daemon wouldn’t be able to shift hit him. It seemed like such an impossibly long time away, despite the Lyons twins having had their daemons settle over two years ago at the same age they were now, and yet here he was, faced with the true form of his inner self, and not a lick like what he expected her to be.

Sensing his own hesitation, Hester lowered herself to the ground. “Is it bad? I know it’s not what we were expecting. I know we talked about me settling as a bird and I like being a bird, but-”

He knelt down in front of her as she babbled and she quieted when he extended his hand. She rose to meet it, pressing her head into his palm, until his fingers pushed back on her flattened ears, as soft and velvety as fresh moss. “I think you’re beautiful,” he said.

“Well, you ain’t winning no beauty contests right now, so that makes one of us,” she quipped, back to her old self with one simple reassurance. Lee lifted his free hand and touched the tender spot on his face where Pa had slugged him. 

“Guess not.”

They fell silent for a moment. “What are we going to do now?” She finally asked.

Lee was at a loss. He glanced behind him and wondered how long it would take Pa to catch up, and then he glanced forward at the long stretch of dirt road that spread out across the country and to parts unknown. He’d always dreamed of seeing what lay beyond Texas. Maybe tonight was the night he started that adventure. “I guess we keep running.”

\---

“We didn’t get very far that night, did we?” Lee was seated in one corner of the balloon with a hand mirror in one hand, while the other probed the yellowing skin around his eye from his bruises, courtesy of the Magisterium’s finest. 

“Why are you still on about this?” Hester was sprawled across from him on a crate, her eyes soft and worried.

“‘Cause that’s the thing about ghosts, Hester. You wake ‘em up, and they don’t go back to sleep easy.” He put the hand mirror down and looked at her, taking in her expression. “I’m okay.”

“You weren’t back there. Not by a long shot.” She hopped down off the crate and loped over to him, putting her front paws on his knee. “I thought we were gonna get away from him that night.”

“Yeah… Me too. But, instead, he found us the next town over and nearly hobbled me.”

He cringed, having to bring that up again. The way he’d described it to Coulter had been with the confidence of someone using all his cleverness as a weapon, but like crawling through a bramble bush to be the best at some stupid war game, it came with its cuts and these went deeper than some briars. Hester could tell, and she sighed and laid her head on his lap.

“Tallulah had my head in her jaws and every time he hit you, she’d just bite down until I thought she’d pop me like a melon, and that would be it.” Hester shuddered. “I had to watch it all and think… Maybe if I had turned into something else, we could have gotten away that night.”

“Now, Hester, don’t go blaming yourself.” Lee stroked her ears until they flattened down her back. “You turned out just fine. Couldn’t ask for a better shape.”

“Not even a mockingbird?” Hester looked up at him, almost skeptical.

He grinned. “You can still sing. What else would I have needed a mockingbird for anyhow?” 

“To remember Ma by,” she said, dejectedly. “To remember back when we weren’t always getting slapped around.”

“Now who’s dwellin’, rabbit?” Lee pulled her up onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her, leaning against the side of the basket as the balloon floated. “Look here, we’re still flying and we’re still singing, and I think we’ve stuck pretty solidly to only focusing on the good times, instead of the bad.”

“Hmm,” Hester hummed. “And we did get away, eventually.”

“Pa had to fall off a damned ladder and break his neck to do it, but we made it, and here we are, still kickin’. Not even the Magisterium can hold us long.”

And like Pa’s little accident, it had been a damned miracle they’d gotten away that time, but Lee was a man of luck and embracing little accidents. Half of the good in his life had come by way of luck and little accidents. 

He idly stroked Hester for a moment in silence until he felt her relax fully for what must have been the first time since they escaped that jail. “At least we had Ma for what little time we did. Lyra’s got parents I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

Coulter may have broken, but he still didn’t like nor trust her. You didn’t need to give a person either to appreciate a kindness, and she’d have to prove herself unselfish further than that for him to ever want her within twenty feet of that little girl. She made him give a reassurance that he'd already vowed. She hadn't paid a cent to free him- that was just how she justified it to herself- and so everything about it was empty, beyond the fact that she clearly believed he loved Lyra. What she didn't believe was he loved her in a way that she didn't- and likely could never.

“Is that why we went so soft?” Hester didn’t look up, but he could imagine the wry glint in those hazel eyes that had captivated him the night she settled. 

“I got about a million reasons why we went soft, but I’m sure that one ranks high.” He flicked her ears, playfully. “We should get some rest. We ain’t finished with this adventure yet.”

“Right.” Lee folded his arms around her just a bit tighter, and she rested her head in the crook of his elbow, intending to lay here for the night instead of on the other side of the gondola where she normally slept. After everything, neither of them wanted to be apart to fight off the ghosts that Lee had dragged up in his attempts to break an already broken soul with the shards of his own shattered pieces.

“Just do me a favor,” she said, nuzzling against him. “Don’t think about him anymore for awhile, all right?”

Lee grunted an affirmation. “I’ll think about how I’m doing a lot better as a father to a kid that ain’t even my own than mine or hers managed.”

“There you go.”


End file.
